


you, as you were that summer

by doublelead



Category: THE iDOLM@STER: SideM
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 01:25:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15853401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublelead/pseuds/doublelead
Summary: There's an echo of that summer, Rui tilting his head and smiling into his sleeves, in Michio's eyes, too. He turns to him with the same light, the same glimmer skittering past, scattering out further than he could ever hope to reach."Are you coming with?"'I don't know if I could.'"What about you, Mister Yamashita?"'I―'It hurts to look, almost.But he breathes – easier, than he has in a while.





	you, as you were that summer

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't finish what i actually wanted to write and barely even made it out of this one rip in pieces me
> 
> hap birth jirou

The moon from his apartment veranda reminds him of a jellyfish, somewhat – bright white, ethereal, floating gently in the summer sky. He sees a spark of the light, peeking from in-between the neighbouring buildings, reflecting itself across Rui’s eyes just as he turns. Following its trajectory lands him with Jirou, falling into his line of sight. 

“Mister Yamashita?” he asks.

It's late, into the tail-ends of what would soon blink into autumn. Jirou chews the inside of cheek, bites back a thought he thinks to leave on the single stone in a summer field, before he continues, drifting as usual.

_'I'm not―'_

Still, it trickles out, disappears like red fireworks into the air. Jirou caught himself to stay quiet, brushing the tips of his fingers around the ceramic of his mosquito coil holder.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_'―enough.'_

There's an echo of that summer, Rui tilting his head and smiling into his sleeves, in Michio's eyes, too. He turns to him with the same light, the same glimmer skittering past, scattering out further than he could ever hope to reach.

"Are you coming with?"

_'I don't know if I could.'_

"What about you, Mister Yamashita?"

_'I―'_ It hurts to look, almost.

But he breathes – easier, than he has in a while.

Jirou grips Rui and Michio’s hands in each of his, wonders through the tremors they most definitely feel, if he would have given them the same answer, not even a few months earlier.

It burns, below his skin, a flicker of something Jirou doesn’t recognise.

Perhaps, he never had the chance to. Maybe, it’s just that he has been swallowing the thought that it had always been there, bubbling, bursting forth.

He gives himself a moment to settle, this time, as well. Time runs quite a fair bit slower for this old man, after all. He’s only grateful that it hasn’t truly stopped, knowing that he wouldn’t have let himself think more into this until far later, either.

For now, he jumps in, into the small happiness a child would find, invited into a game of hide-and-seek with the rest of the boys and girls in the playground.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _You can see them, right? The fireworks?”_

_It’s not hard to, this close to the river’s edge._

“ _Yeah.”_

_The sky isn’t the only place where they could bloom. Jirou’s content, with dipping his fingers just slightly into its reflection, letting it sluice around his skin._

“ _Do you not like festivals, Mister Yamashita?”_

_It’s kind of cold. Surely, it’s warmer, where the lights are, two, three stations away from the quiet corner of their neighbourhood park._

“ _I’m not sure.”_

_Rui’s shoes are the same ones he wears to school. A little darker under the dim street lamp, white laces frayed at the ends, without the cherry blossom petals he saw when they had first met, nestled atop the toebox._

“ _I hope we get to see lots more together.”_

_Jirou pretends not to notice the stray star that made its way onto his palm, cupped above Rui’s under the water._

_He counts to ten in his head, until he believes_ _that this is more than enough._

 _An old man doesn’t need to look upwards, straining to view the_ _milkyway_ _._

 

 

* * *

 

 

At an acceleration of twenty four point seven-nine metres per second cubed, Jupiter’s gravitational field is the strongest among the planets in our solar system. True to their namesake, it’s no wonder that Michio was drawn in, along with the students crowded around the stage.

Their inner yard, the stars looking in from the hallway windows, himself, barely in the fluorescence’s periphery – their school in that one instance, was its own galaxy.

Michio is a little like the moon, he thinks. _Ganymede,_ Jirou considers, _and Rui could_ _as_ _easily be Io._ There’s no doubt that the both of them have strong enough of a pull – enough to catch the universe into their gravity, one day.

‘ _What does that make me, then?’_

 _An asteroid,_ _a little outside of orbit._

Jirou sighs, rubs the ache on the side of his jaw lax, quietly returns to grading the papers on his desk.

_Callisto still feels too overwhelmingly bright for him right now._

 

 

* * *

 

 

" _Rowing through, out of the mist,_ " Jirou mutters, drumming the back of his pencil, idle beats. “ _The wide sea._ ”

“Matsuo Bashou?” Rui asks, from his seat next to him.

“About two hundred years off there, buddy,” Jirou says. He slides down his chair, rests the nape of his neck on the headrest as he turns to look, out to the window, at the already orange sky. “Masaoka Shiki.”

“Wow! Didn’t think you’d be one for classical poetry, Mister Yamashita!” Rui laughs, bumping the sides of their school slippers together. Jirou is slightly tempted to kick him, his legs are feeling a little cramped anyway, knees folded at an uncomfortable angle below the desk.

Plus, they’re at school, technically. He’s pretty sure this is already toeing very closely into inappropriate work place boundaries.

“Honestly? I just liked Choma and Tama, and then it somehow spiralled from there.” He doesn’t though, sighs instead, closing his eyes. They have about a few more minutes, until one of Jirou’s third years comes in for university guidance.

This much, should be fine.

“Wouldn’t think I’d end up out of that mist, either, though, yeah?” Jirou continues, after a while.

“Oh, no, that I’ve always thought.” He hears Rui hop closer with his chair, rubber cups on linoleum. There’s a soft whisper of his oversized sleeves, a brush of the hem, his fingers, meek, almost, as they reach out for Jirou’s. “It’s going to be the three of us together, from now on. The sea doesn’t _have_ to be scary.”

_He wonders about that, really._

The third floor science preparation room is cool, crisp autumn air pushing at the curtains. Jirou imagines his breath taking shape as he exhales, orange-lined clouds rising upwards behind his eyelids – warm, most of all, like the weight of his and Rui’s hands curled together.

“ _Yaaama-chan-sens_ _ee_ _ei!_ ”

He opens his eyes, at the sound of pattering footsteps from the hallway. Upside down from over the headrest, Jirou’s hair falls away from his face, for him to find Class 3-A’s Hontoku popping his head in through the sliding door.

“Oh!” he says, immediately bowing his head. “Maitaru-sensei is here too! Good afternoon!”

_It feels like shouldn’t be this easy, but at least, it seems like their ship have already started to set course._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Hello! My name is Maita Rui, please call me Michael!”

Jirou scrunches his nose, eyes closed and arms rossed as he mulls over Rui’s little routine. “Well, _I_ like it,” he supposes. “But for reasons that probably won't count. Would it work on pro judges?”

“It worked on one old man, wouldn’t be a stretch that it’ll work a few more,” Rui says, winks as he patters away from the window towards him.

“There you go, saying those kind of things again,” Jirou sighs.

He doesn’t think he has ever seen how the cherry blossoms had looked like last year, from outside his window, facing the door as he did when he had first saw Rui. A few weeks after the third year classes had ended, in the days off leading up to the their graduation, the young new recruit for their English department decided to visit early, making rounds to meet his new co-workers come next year.

It had been the exact same greeting, a puddle of the odd or so petals rising from the floor along his door sliding open, fluttering down to settle on his shoelaces.

Jirou isn’t really sure, if finding it in himself to start braving a peek, out from over the fringe of his own toes, came with Rui that one spring morning, but wonders, in turn, if he really needed to be.

“Have you said your goodbyes, Yamashita-kun?”

He swivels on his chair to see Michio standing right where Rui had been back then, knocking thrice on the wooden door frame before walking in. His blazer jacket is neatly pressed and already fully buttoned, a flower corsage pinned to his breast pocket.

“Yeah...” In some ways, the third floor science preparation room is his own little universe, too.

“A harbour is as much a home, as it is a starting line.” Michio’s expressions softens, into a genuine, gentle smile he rarely sees. He continues, his hand warm on Jirou's shoulder. “It stays your constant, even on your voyage.”

“You’re right.”

He’ll miss this – a space tucked away in an old school building, a rickety roller chair, coffee stains on his desk, overlapping ringlets that he could trace back to the one beaker he keeps for himself.

The scant point grams the corsage adds to his the blazer shouldn’t have felt the way it did, draped over his arms.

“They’ll see you, from an even greater distance away, now,” Michio says, taking Jirou's hand into of his, leading him to the door. “Shall we?”

“Do you think they’ll let us sing for the students?” Rui laughs, trailing closely behind them out into the empty hallway.

“ _Uwahh_ spare me at least that.” Jirou groans, moves to hide his face in Michio’s shoulder.

“ _Bo_ _o!_ It would count as our graduation live! Ah― which reminds me!” He jogs, around both Jirou and Michio, and then a few tiles further down. His smile is the brightest Jirou has ever seen it, front-facing with his fingers laced behind his back, his weight on his tiptoes.

“I want to be the first one to say it, so!” Rui pauses to breathe. “Congratulations on your graduation, Mister Yamashita!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Maybe I want to see the fireworks after all.”_

_He says it all too casually. Quiet, on a winter evening, at a crossing between passing headlights._

“ _We’ll look at it from somewhere closer this time, then.”_

_The grocery bag they hold between the two of them drops with half the weight Rui lets go. Jirou watches him walk ahead, bright hair catching green outlines, in the short few steps he takes, out from under the stoplight._

“ _I’ll be looking forward to that, then.”_

_He stumbles to carry it himself, but he runs – to the middle of the road, meeting Rui halfway._

“ _Like from space!”_

_Two summers ago, he would have stayed, waiting for the light to turn back red, and then green again before he goes, at the pace he has set within his own bubble of the world._

“ _Do you think we can see them from up there?”_

_Jirou remembers counting warning beeps in the cold air, watching shadows stretch and disappear under his shoes._

“ _It’d be nice if we could!”_

 _He’s_ _panting now, doubl_ _ed over_ _as he laughs,_ _white wisps against his knees, already on the other side._

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You look happy,” Rui he wonders, a crinkle in his smile, sidling closer, knowing their microphones are turned off. 

Jirou tilts his head, takes his time, as he would usually. That much hasn’t changed, and for every other thing around him – _about him_ – that has, he’s kind of grateful, in a way. Time doesn’t flow any faster for this old man than it has before, but he’s at a point, where he learns not to hang his head low, pretending that it had raced past him, far overhead.

“I guess I am,” he decides, in the end.

If he were to be completely honest, there’s a part of him that’s still unsure about a lot of things. He could hear his heart, too loud behind his IEM, pounding under the hand he holds tightly to his chest.

It hurts – incredibly, almost crushingly.

He wants to scream.

His cheeks ache. He feels warmth, tinted red around his eyes.

It’s a little difficult for him to see – down at his boots, dazed, the sliver of Rui’s and Michio’s seeping into the corners, through a smile that can't quite hold back from overflowing.

He wants, _actually wants._

_Frustration,_ he finally realises, a deep-seated longing to _try._

The staggered sigh he lets out feels overdue, for what seems to be the weight tumbling off his shoulders. This is okay. _He’s okay._ There’s still a lot of the ocean, a whole universe, even, above their heads, for them to explore from here on out.

And maybe, for once, just for himself, he wants to know what it looks like, at a place higher than the atmosphere.

“One point two-three-six.” _Jirou wonders if he has finally reached it._

“Hmm?” Rui looks up at him, curious.

“Nothing.” He knocks the back of their hands together as he grins, sheepish, like it’s a private joke he would fumble to explain.

_Callisto’s gravitational acceleration is_ _one point two-three-six_ _metres per second cubed_ _, a Galilean moon furthest out in orbit._

“Hey, Rui?” Rui as he is right in front of him, reminds him of that summer night. A single spark, a faint light, across the dark and over his shoulders, falling towards where Jirou catches it in his eyes. He turns, facing him fully, head-on. “Thank you, for finding me.”

His part of the galaxy, Jirou finds, is still small, on the outskirts of the world. It’s blurred, behind the breath he could now easily bridge into the air, stretching further than the stage under his feet―

“I don’t think you were ever lost in the first place, Mister Yamashita.”

―a sea of dizzying pink.

**Author's Note:**

>  _loneliness_  
>  after the fireworks  
> stars' shooting  
> \- Masaoka Shiki
> 
> There isn't a clear start to this. I don't know if it'll arrive anywhere in the end, either. But this whole journey will always lead back to you, finding your own dream, finding those who wouldn't let themselves dream, just as you did. 
> 
> Thank you for finding me.
> 
> I'm glad you're not alone.
> 
> Happy birthday, Yamashita Jirou.


End file.
